Democracy is not just a matter of constitutions, parliaments, elections, parties and the rule of law. In order to see if or how democracy works, we must attend to what people make of it, and what they think they are doing as they engage with politics, or as politics engages them. This book examines the way democracy and democratization are thought about and lived by people in China, Russia and eleven other countries in the post-communist world. It shows how democratic politics (and sometimes authoritarian politics) work in these countries, and generates insights into the prospects for different kinds of political development. The authors explore the implications for what was probable and possible in terms of trajectories of political reform at the time of writing ( 2002), and examine four roads to democratization: liberal, republican, participatory and statist. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, political theory and post-communist studies and provides a novel "ground up" perspective by examining the ways in which ordinary people have viewed and responded to democracy. Having examined a number of countries at different stages of transition, they argue that democracy has been understood differently in different places and with varying levels of approval. The authors define their research within the context of each country's history and relate their analysis to future prospects for reform.
Book is clean and unmarked, although there has been som distortion of the front cover.